Necron NMM - Part I

So it's not the best photo, simply for being in a rush the lighting makesthe top of the head darker than it should be, but for my first real experiment in NMM, it's ok. There's a few things gone wrong, a few things gone right, and a lot learned in the process

Rather than be normal and start with a silver, or a gold, I wanted something a little different: copper. As it turns out, copper is really hard to do owing to it being a bit of strange mix of colours. There's reds, browns, hints of orange, pinks, blues, even a bit of white. Still, I'm lucky enough to have a wide variety of paints, and I don't intend on painting an entire army this way, so for a bit of practice it would be fine. Also the Internet is a great resource for getting started with - always do a bit of research first to get off to the best start.

I've decided that NMM techniques are all about two things: contrast and transition. High contrast along edges, and transition across larger surfaces. So I wasn't going to be afraid of using quite a few paints to achieve a nice gradient, which helps reproduce the effect later on. Plenty of water or flow improver was used to make sure the paints were very thin; glaze consistency for the most part. Don't rush, spend some time building up the layers.

• Mournfang Brown over the entire area. It's worth a couple of thin coats to get a nice, even coverage. This serves as a little darker than the midtone, where it can be lightened or darkened from.
  
• Doombull Brown to glaze the areas that should be lighter. The top of the head, the temples, the lower jaw, the bridge of the nose.
• Tuskgor Fur to further glaze and lighten, just a little less areas covered than before.
  
• Squig Orange then glazed to further lighten, and start to really brighten the sharpest edges. 
• Emperor's Children glazed across yet smaller areas, and edge highlighted to bring out contrast along sharper areas, or where the light is expected to reflect with higher intensity. It's this part where the colours really start to stand out and it might start to look a bit coppery.
• Deepkin Flesh, chose specifically because it has a very slight blue to it, used for highest intensity reflections. Sharp edges, or highest points in a curve. There is a lot of back & forth between previous colours and here - wet palettes help with this a lot, along with good brush!
• Barak-Nar Burgundy glazed into the darker areas. This essentially forms a line against the sharper edges, increasing contrast and giving the impression of reflection. I might have used a deeper purple, or a blue, but the burgundy allows me to recover a little if I mess it up and still push it a bit further into blue later on if necessary.

I think this has worked well enough that I'm confident enough to keep going with it across the rest of the model. The main outer armour or carapace surfaces will be copper, and I'm considering a very dark silver, or perhaps a shiny black, for between those areas.

I've yet to decide on the weapon, but the energy glow will either be a green, or perhaps teal, turquoise, aqua.

-- silly painter.

Horus Lupercal - Part V

Just flapping in the breeze.

 Time again for minor progress on Horus. Mainly I just wanted to jot down some notes on something new now, rather than wait until I've done a lot more and roll it up into a larger post.

Today it's the pteruges hanging from the waist. There's still some work to go on them, but there's enough to actually glue that part into place. I've already done those that fit on near the right shoulder, but they won't be attached until the full arm is ready as well.

I thought about the colour to use for a while and ultimately went with leathery brown, almost the same hue as the filigree edging on the the armour but with perhaps slightly more red to it. The whole idea is that they should not stand out against the upper chest, or eventually the face. I've gone with quite a bit of Contrast in the end:

• Wraithbone base over the leather areas.
• Snakebite Leather applied in a thin layer over the top. This is more glaze consistency - don't allow it to pool.
• Gore Grunta Fur / Contrast Medium (1:2 mix) to again glaze over the area. A second glaze was applied if that wasn't quite enough.
• Blood Angels Red mixed in with the leftover from the previous step, about a brush load. This was applied to the upper areas just for a little variety, and harmonises very well with the eye jewel on the torso area.
  
• Agrax Earthshade applied over most areas, but again not allowed too pool heavily. This step gives greater definition and depth to individual lengths of the leather.
• Wyldwood was lastly applied very carefully and in very small amounts to give greater depth and darken the areas a little more. Glaze consistency is again key.

I'm not yet fully done, as mentioned. The red needs some shadowing more against the belt, and a few edge highlights here and there wouldn't go astray. Just need to be very careful not to overdo it - it will be very difficult to fix mistakes from this point.

The metal ends I ended up with a more red metallic than the armour. I didn't want the bronzes of the armour, nor the golds on the weapon. Perhaps a different metal was used: gifts from allies, or trinkets made from the salvage of fallen enemies. Using a reddish metal ties it together with some colouring I've started to use on Blood Angels weapons, which again both signifies the closeness that Sanguinius once shared with Horus, and how that changed when Horus turned traitor.

• Screaming Bell as a base.
  
• Cryptek Armourshade to do what shades do.
• Runelord Brass as a first highight.
• Canoptek Alloy as a final edge highlight. This is a very light, desaturated metallic and so is best thinned down a little first. It ends up very close to a bright silver (just a little more brass into the mix) and was used directly on the pteruge studs.

There still a little eye jewel to be done as well, and I may end up with Contrast paints once again because this is the sort of area where they're very effective.

-- silly painter.

Assault Intercessor Death Company - Part V

Quickly, run perpendicular to the enemy!

Abso-fraggin-lutely!

Stand still, I want to hit you with my chainsword.

And done. There could be a little more work on the base to make it more interesting, but I mostly just can't be bothered now. It's been a bit of a struggle to finish these guys actually; thinking over it, each Death Company ends up quite unique, and so painting each one feels like a character in their own right, naturally taking more effort and care each.

For painting, nothing really new to speak of, no new colours that haven't been tried before. I do like how the base and chestplate tie together, but don't like how my Windsor&Newton brush decided to split while trying to write out some words. I'm not going back over it now, but have to look at why that brush is doing so. Frustrating to say the least.

I've bought another Assault Intercessor, so this squad of Death Company will grow soon enough.

-- silly painter.

Assault Intercessor Death Company - Part IV

Here, catch.

A brief extra today just to take notes on what I'd actually done. They're not yet finished, but really aren't very far off now.

• The chestplate winged skull:
• Morghast Bone
• Skeleton Horde Contrast
• Agrax Earthshade in the deeper recessed areas to really make it stand out more. A little of this was needed at the end to fix some mistakes too.
• Ushabti Bone along the edges
• Screaming Skull as final edge highlight, mostly on the tips of the "feathers".

The engine of the chainsword is taken from Lieutenant Tolmeron's power sword hilt:

• Screaming Bell
• Reikland Fleshshade Gloss
• Hashut Copper as highlight.
• Fulgurite Copper as final edge highlight

The chapter badge:

• Celestra Grey. Two thin coats to get a nice solid colour.
• Blue Horror edge paint to give a hint of blue.
• Ulthuan Grey, focusing on the more prominent areas.

Note that the model pictured here does not have a blood drop gemstone in the chapter badge. This is intentional: as a full chapter badge is black, so the Death Company wear white. Where there's something to set the gemstone into, I will paint that in the usual red.

-- silly painter.

Assault Intercessor Death Company - Part III

Goblet and halo on the backpack. Why? Because he can.

 

Fully assembled now, I'm starting to pick back up the pace with painting these Death Company. None of the red has been highlighted yet, but the outline of the red crosses on the armour has been done. These will be brightened to make them stand out more.

The metallics are mostly done for this phase, and I'll come back to them after the varnish spray. I've used the gloss shades this time around because the base was already quite dark (Iron Hands Steel) and I didn't want to push it further. The gold is Balthasar Gold with Cryptek Armourshade Gloss just to see how it would look. The shade has a slightly red hue to it, and I've been looking for an excuse to see how it goes with the various golds.

Back in black.

 The holster is another new experiment with the Contrast range.

• Zandri Dust over the leather areas.
• Screaming Skull to add scratches, creases, and general wear along the edges.
• Gore Grunta Fur over the whole area. It was applied a little too heavily in this case.
• Agrax Earthshade around some recessed areas, or to darken as necessary.

I'm not entirely convinced that Gore Grunta Fur was the right choice, but I don't have much of the Contrast range and so it was the best choice at the time. It should have been applied just a little thinner however. The Screaming Skull doesn't show through particularly much either, so might need something a bit brighter in future. Still, while this might not work against full red armour, here it's better than the normal brown I've been using.

The purple gems on the right pauldron I was going to keep mostly as purple, but may try to highlight to a red just for something different.

-- silly painter.

 

Skeletons

Possibly one used to be an adventurer, before he took an arrow to the head.

 

These skeletons are the beginning of a side project that I've been planning for some time, which is to build stand-in models for the Hero Quest board game. The ultimate goal is to recreate the entire game, including the board and furniture, so the models are meant to be played with. For that reason they are not in any way intended to be up to my normal standard: I'm expecting these models to be roughly handled and occasionally damaged.

 The skeletons are done mostly with contrast and metallic paints. The actual bone was rather simple:

• Black primer, just because it's excellent as a primer.
• Wraithbone spray, two coats to try get good coverage.
• Skeleton Horde from the Contrast range.
• Morghast Bone to fix any areas that don't look quite right. This is mostly to highlight something, or smooth over where Skeleton Horde didn't quite dry nicely enough. It's virtually identical to the raised areas after the Contrast paint stage, which is a nice piece of information to remember.

The eyes were simply Corax White and Aethermatic Blue. It didn't quite give the appearance I wanted; a more purple colour would have fit better.

Most cloth was covered in Nighthaunt Gloom, wood was covered in Wyldwood, and metals are a combination of various paints - there's no real recipe there, it's just play with them and try get some rust effects with washes and different metal tones.

For a lazy approach to wood grain, particularly on the shields, a hack is to first prime the shield black like usual, and then use one coat of Wraithbone base paint, applied by keeping brush strokes in one direction and making it very uneven and streaky. When Wyldwood is applied over the top, the streaks of the base paint will come through. With a little practice it can be fast and doesn't just look like a sloppy paint job.

The bases were Astrogranite, thinned with water Wyldwood, and some Hoeth Blue drybrushed around the out edge. I'm not actually sure if I won't be later using clear bases anyway, so no thought went into this process - it was mostly that I wanted to see how it would look (result: it looks bad, but at least I know that now).

The varnish spray at the end has also muted the colours quite a lot. Too much actually, though at least with undead skeleton warriors this is somewhat fitting.

Painting these models did allow me to experiment with Contrast paints some more, and basically play around without caring to be neat or paint to a high standard. Even so, the Tyranids were simpler to paint, and came out looking better, in that sense these skeletons were a bit of a failure.

-- silly painter.